Letter to Olivier Zahm

THOMAS HIRSCHHORN is one of my favorite artists, for aesthetic, political, even philosophical reasons. He refused to participe in a show I curated in 2006 at the Grand Palais in Paris, rejecting the concept of an art & fashion show. I was upset and we didn’t speak for a while. Then I received a letter, with the reproductions of the collages I wanted to exhibit, in which he clearly explains why art and fashion should not be mixed, and why he fights what he calls “the defeat of art in the face of fashion.” I found his radical point of view of separating art and fashion beautiful. And strangely enough, I thought it had to be said in these pages, by a major artist, because Purple Fashion was largely established on the historical validity of their connection (from Ingmar Bergman to Matthew Barney for example). But the confusion between art and fashion was…